The Five Most Common Obstacles to Breaking Attendance Barriers – Rainer on Leadership #126

Podcast Episode #126

Discussion about Church Answers, a new monthly subscription program for church staff and leaders to go deeper into the topics we cover on the blog and podcast. You can find out more about how to be involved with Church Answers at ChurchAnswers.com/subscribe.

Some highlights from today’s episode include:

Church staff should be leading by example by focusing on ministering to people outside of the church.

We get used to seeing things a certain way and don’t realize obvious problems because of our comfort.

When there is serious conflict between staff members, there is a serious unity problem that can affect the entire church.

The two main causes for church staff conflict are conflicting vision and poor communication.

It is a sin to be good when God has called you to be great.

Churches who are not praying will become churches who are dying.

The five obstacles to breaking attendance barriers in the local church are:

Leadership that is not outwardly focused.

Failure to understand space issues.

Failure to get an outside perspective.

Staff conflict.

Failure to emphasize group and corporate prayer.

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The last on your list should be the first; corporate prayer. Without prayer none of the other practices will be effective. We talk prayer a lot in the church, but too often we focus on having to have a choir, preach or teach on Wednesday Prayer services, etc. We have made a conscious effort to really incorporate corporate prayer into the life of the church other than someone praying to begin or end our time together. We spend 10-15 minutes in silent prayer every Wednesday and even in our Sunday morning worship, we have no choir. We set aside the first Wednesday of each month as prayer time. I believe that has been vital to the life being restored into our church.

A sixth obstacle that could be added is a congregation that just loves their little country club clique and resists growth.
Which has always puzzled me and makes me wonder if they even qualify as being a church in the first place. After all….how could a group struggle against the Great Commission and consider themselves a church?